Big Ten Academic Alliance President Keith Marshall to Retire After a Decade of Leadership

May 11, 2026

Keith Marshall, President of the Big Ten Academic Alliance, will retire in December 2026 after a decade in the role.

As President, Marshall worked with the Provosts of the 18 Big Ten universities and the University of Chicago to advance their academic missions, generate unique opportunities for students and faculty, and serve the common good by sharing expertise, pooling campus resources, and collaborating on innovative programs. To that end, he led a staff of 30 who managed over 200 peer groups, $127M in joint purchases annually, and dozens of collaborative programs, resulting in $32.8M in annual savings.

During Marshall’s tenure, he oversaw several major initiatives that expanded access to knowledge. The Big Ten Academic Alliance grew its nationally recognized leadership development programs, established the Big Ten Academic Alliance Leadership Institute, and secured $1.5M in grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to enhance academic leadership training opportunities for humanities faculty.

The BIG Collection, the most ambitious collaboration to date, was created to treat the separate Big Ten library collections as a single unified pool of knowledge resources available to all. The Big Ten Academic Alliance Open Publishing model directly benefited tens of thousands of faculty authors and researchers by making their published research immediately open to the public at significant cost savings.

The Alliance also broadened its international reach by partnering with Réseau Figure, a French consortium of elite engineering programs, to connect their students to research opportunities at Big Ten universities through the International Research Experience Program.

The award-winning “We Are Here” ad campaign highlighted the joint impact of Big Ten Academic Alliance universities to television audiences nationwide, and four new member institutions joined in 2024, the Alliance’s largest expansion to date, increasing membership to 18 institutions. Marshall further served on the Board of Directors for the Association for Collaborative Leadership (ACL) and as a faculty instructor for the ACL Summer Institute.

“The Big Ten Academic Alliance would not be what it is today without the steady and consistent leadership of Keith Marshall,” said Kathleen Hagerty, Provost at Northwestern University and Chair of the Big Ten Academic Alliance Board of Directors. “Through the COVID-19 pandemic, changing regulatory landscapes, rapid growth of the organization and consistent turnover of academic leadership at member universities, he has been the guiding light, providing a productive space for our distinct institutions to converge in coordinated and strategic ways. We appreciate all that Keith has done to ensure the Big Ten Academic Alliance remains a prosperous and productive organization for years to come.”

Marshall joined the Big Ten Academic Alliance in 2017 after spending 26 years at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. While at Illinois, he served as Assistant Provost for Undergraduate Education, Associate Provost and Executive Director of the Campus Center for Advising and Academic Services, Associate Provost for Enrollment Management, and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Sociology. He plans to stay in Urbana and remain active as a higher education consultant.

Barbara Wilson, President of the University of Iowa, praised Marshall's distinct vision and commitment: “Keith Marshall’s leadership has strengthened the Big Ten Academic Alliance as a model for what is possible when great universities come together in a spirit of shared purpose. He has been a thoughtful and steady partner, advancing collaboration in ways that have opened new opportunities for our students, faculty, and staff. His deep commitment to higher education, and to the people it serves, has left a lasting mark on the Alliance and its member institutions. We are deeply grateful for his service and wish him the very best in his retirement.”

A national search for his replacement will begin soon.

About the Big Ten Academic Alliance:
The Big Ten Academic Alliance is the nation's preeminent model for effective collaboration among research universities. With $21.2 billion in funded research, more than 835,000 students, and 78,000 faculty, Big Ten universities are the cornerstone of American higher education. Since 1958, these world-class institutions have advanced their academic missions, generated unique opportunities for students and faculty, and served the common good by sharing expertise, leveraging campus resources, and collaborating on innovative programs. Governed and funded by the Provosts of the member universities, Big Ten Academic Alliance programs and initiatives are coordinated by a staff from its Champaign, Illinois headquarters.

Media inquiries: Jake Myers, Associate Director of Operations,
communications@btaa.org​